In the Hungarian capital, the first stage of the trip, he held an ecumenical meeting with the Jewish community at the Museum of Fine Arts adjacent to Heroes’ Square.
Francis met with representatives of Christians, who make up 52% of the population and of which 30% are Catholic, and with the Jewish community, heavily decimated during the Nazi Holocaust and of which between 10.000 and 15.000 members throughout the country.
According to the 1941 census, there were 725.005 people in Hungary who considered themselves Jewish (4,94% of the population) and another 100 were “race Jews” who identified themselves as Christians.
An estimated 594 Jews were murdered during the Shoah (Holocaust).
At the event, Pope Francis appreciated that the different confessions present in the country, among which are Lutherans and Calvinists, “have united to tear down the walls of separation of the past.”
«You, Jews and Christians, wish to see in each other no longer a stranger, but a friend; no longer an adversary, but a brother,” he noted, adding that God asks them to leave “the misunderstandings of the past, the pretensions of being right and blaming others, behind, to set us on the path toward his promise of peace.”
And he urged that this union be strong in the face of the temptation to “absorb the other”, because when it has been attempted “it has not been built, it has been destroyed” and “the same when they have wanted to marginalize it in a ghetto, instead of integrating it.” ».
» How many times has this happened in history! We must be vigilant and pray that it does not happen again. And commit ourselves to promoting together an education for fraternity, so that the outbreaks of hatred that want to destroy it do not prevail. “I think of the threat of anti-Semitism, which still snakes in Europe and elsewhere,” she warned. EFE and Aurora
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Source link : https://aurora-israel.co.il/en/The-Pope-warns-of-the-resurgence-of-anti-Semitism-in-Europe/
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Publish date : 2024-05-31 08:44:58
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